Much like a physical notebook, note taking applications allow notes, photos, and other useful information and items to be captured and organized for later reference. Many note taking applications also provide recording tools for capturing audio and video presentations. Written notes can be typed, but many applications also support hand-written notes. In either case, written notes are indexed along with the other information, such as an audio recording or web clipping, to allow for quick searching and retrieval functions.
One feature in many note taking applications is the ability to temporally index information across a variety of information formats. As information is entered into a collection environment, the information is time-stamped such that it can be linked to other time-stamped information. Such an arrangement allows the later presentation of one set of information to be synchronized with another set of information.
For instance, a user may attend a lecture during which she generates written notes pertaining to the lecture, as well as an audio recording of the lecture. The written notes can be indexed to the recording on a per-paragraph basis such that the later presentation of either may be synchronized with the other. For example, upon clicking on or touching a particular paragraph in the lecture notes, the playback of the audio recording can jump to a selection corresponding to the indicated paragraph. In another example, the presentation of the lecture notes can symbolically track the playback of the audio recording, such as by graphically highlighting each corresponding paragraph as the audio playback progresses.